Just read and enjoyed Bill Zehme's piece on Johnny Carson in the new Esquire. An abbreviated version can be read online by clicking right here…but don't expect the full article to tell you much more. The news about Carson is that there is no news about Carson and there's not likely to be any. He is content in his retirement and there's darn near nothing that could lure him back into the public arena. To his credit, Zehme manages to turn that lack of anything to report into a full-fledged, entertaining profile…though perhaps what is most entertaining is merely that we're spending time again with Johnny. (I just realized that I started reading the piece around 11:35, the moment I used to settle down to watch Mr. Carson's monologue. Very appropriate.)
A lot of us still miss Johnny and I have to agree with the part of Tom Shales's recent piece in which he said that, "If you add up Letterman plus Leno plus Conan O'Brien, you still don't have a Johnny Carson."
At the same time, I think there's a danger of over-canonizing the one-time Prince of Late Night. I don't recall Johnny, while he was on the air, ever being as lionized and respected as he is now that he's become a part of history. I don't recall a single TV critic, Shales included, being mesmerized by anything other than Johnny's sheer endurance. Only when it became clear that it was about to end did we see the essays about how important he had become to us. We, the viewers, knew it but not many said it aloud. When Johnny was present-tense, it was fashionable to knock him for his double-entendres; for the monologue jokes that crashed and burned; for a steady parade of airhead starlets in the guest chair; for not booking guests as erudite as Jack Paar's stable of regulars; for shunning controversy and serious topics. The typical magazine piece about Carson was not about him being a legend. It was about him being cold and aloof, taking too many nights off and holding poor NBC up for occasional raises. From my own observations, I always thought those nits were overwrought and exaggerated…and, from the way they've evaporated, I guess they must have been. When people today write or speak of Carson, that kind of talk would verge on sacrilege.
Pendulums, however, have that annoying tendency to swing too far in the opposite direction. There must be some kids out there buying the vintage Carson videos now being sold over at www.johnnycarson.com and via infomercial, watching them and wondering what all the fuss is about. Some of that would be because Johnny's appeal had a lot to do with how right on top of the latest news and topics he always was, and how shrewd he was about dropping a subject and moving on. There also has to be a little disappointment in seeing him today because his effect on us was cumulative. It wasn't that he was great on any given night but that he set a certain standard and never dipped below that standard for three decades.
And one other thing: The video releases seem to emphasize the great stand-ups Johnny had on — fun, but that doesn't show us how good he was — and the sketches, which were not what we loved him for. We loved him for plain ol' hosting, sitting behind the desk, chatting. Some of the moments that would truly demonstrate his skill would be those with the least-stellar guests. No one could "save" a dying spot better than Carson or make a civilian look better.
As I said, I enjoyed the Zehme article, and I suspect Johnny will, as well, for it makes his retirement out to be the wise move that it probably was. (He might be less enchanted by one photo, which seems to have been taken by a photographer eager to show us how large Johnny's bald spot has gotten.) The piece won't tell you much more than that Carson is serene in his absence from us and pretty well committed to keeping things that way. Still, it's a few new minutes with Johnny. How often do we get that, these days?